'It was months after Irene hit, near the Holidays, and I needed stocking stuffer for my wife. I bought this since she was so bugged out about not having power during Irene. But then Sandy came along and we really had to use it.

Pros:
- 3 AAA batteries last 3 days of radio usage for 36 hour total.
- Has light, radio, aux. battery all in one and can charge your cell with USB.
Cons:
- Digital tuner employs a wheel dial for tuning. Sorry, digital and wheel tuning? What's next an old cylinder with slide?
- led: light output laughable.
- Construction: Was this made by a childrens toy manufacturer?
- Self powered: Its YOU powered. YOU crank and crank then when your hearing is lost listening to that annoying noise during cranking, YOU need to raise the volume of the radio, using more energy causing YOU to crank more. Laughable.
- NOT FOR EMERGENCY USE for more than a day or two.
- Oh and the cranking?? Cranked so much would have been better off making butter or ice cream.
- Think about it...your cranking 7 mins. for 5 mins talk time. Write a letter and save your energy.

I see a lot of these devices offer a USB port so you can charge/power a mobile phone, has anyone tested that? I assume it would take a hell of a lot of cranking to get enough usable juice for even a basic cell phone. Thoughts?

LifeInPa, proud to be a member of pa2a.org since Sep 2012.Sanity, yours if you can keep it.

JustinHEMI;44691 Wrote:Yeah one of the reviews said seven minutes of cranking for five minutes off charge. I'm not sure these are all they're cracked up to be.
Justin

Surprisingly that's less cranking than I expected. I remember years ago in either Popular Science or Mechanics that a company was a year away from releasing a portable fuel cell device that would create power from a small methane cartridge, or something like that. You would be able to purchase the cartridges from any store that carries cell phone accessories and it would be plenty of power to keep a laptop running for 24 hours or a cell phone for days on end. That seemed like a good idea for powering a cell phone in an emergency as I bet something like that has a longer shelf-life than any battery.

LifeInPa, proud to be a member of pa2a.org since Sep 2012.Sanity, yours if you can keep it.

I was at Advance auto the other day and they had these:http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/webapp/...m=inverter
400 watt inverter for $49. I figured it would be good to run something small (like a radio) and to use to charge a cell phone.
Just keep a deep cycle battery in the house, maybe with one of the cheap solar battery maintainers as well.

Advance is running 20% off as well as you get a $50 credit for a future purchase of $100 or more when you spend $100 today.

That's a pile of savings and you don't have to pay shipping as you can pick the stuff up in the store.

Some people need to read this book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1936976021/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_bs5jwbZH1GAZF

39Flathead;44791 Wrote:I was at Advance auto the other day and they had these:http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/webapp/...m=inverter
400 watt inverter for $49. I figured it would be good to run something small (like a radio) and to use to charge a cell phone.
Just keep a deep cycle battery in the house, maybe with one of the cheap solar battery maintainers as well.

Advance is running 20% off as well as you get a $50 credit for a future purchase of $100 or more when you spend $100 today.

That's a pile of savings and you don't have to pay shipping as you can pick the stuff up in the store.

I was discussing this topic with Streaker in another thread, charging a battery with solar and drawing power from it for devices. He mentioned that an inverter waste a lot of power in going from AC to DC so if the device is DC you are best just drawing straight DC for the device. Maybe Streaker will chime in.

LifeInPa, proud to be a member of pa2a.org since Sep 2012.Sanity, yours if you can keep it.